Chapter Fourteen
ANDA
I’ve never had a dream like this before.
I’m in a foreign city. Everyone is Asian and speaks a language I’ve never heard. It’s winter, and the cold air is ravenous, gnawing warmth away from people in their thick coats and scarves. Hurrying along the crowded sidewalk, there is a little boy—a toddler—and his mother. His skin is deeper, like aged oak, but hers is pale as parchment. They have the same dark eyes. Beautiful eyes.
The city street is busy and full of metal, wheels, voices, walls of steel. There are cabs and cars bumper to bumper. Steam from car exhaust and manholes rises here and there. Neon signs flash from the buildings above, and a constant din of honking horns, voices, and engines roar together in a garish cacophony.
The mother’s hair is tied in a messy black ponytail. She makes no eye contact with anyone as she pulls the boy’s mittened hand down the street. Her shoulders hunch over, burdened by the city air above. Two businessmen murmur to each other as they approach her. They are going to pass her and her son on the sidewalk.
One of them shouts at the mother, pushing out his chin to add punctuation.
Yanggalbo.
Somehow, I’m allowed to know what this means. Yankee prostitute.
He points to the boy, who cowers against his mother’s legs, but she isn’t enough shelter. Not from them; not from this.
The other businessman reaches out with his middle finger and presses it against the boy’s forehead. He pushes it firmly away, as he might a dirty object.
Gumdungee-ba.
Look at this black animal.
The boy reels from the finger-push as if it were a slap. The mother squeezes through them, trying to get by. Passersby stare rudely. No one says anything to help. Some of them wear the same expressions of disgust as the men; others’ eyes widen with pity and fear. The first businessman spits on the child, and his toddler eyes register shock as he recoils. His mother scoops him up and runs down the street.
The boy doesn’t cry.
Why isn’t he crying?
His eyes are wide open. They see everything, empty and accepting.
They see me. He blinks, and I open my mouth to say something. But nothing comes out, and I wake up with still no words on my tongue.
Dazedly, I take in my surroundings. I’m in my father’s room, in a clean nightgown. It’s night. My skin is dry and thirsty, and I’m air-hungry with panic.
How did I get here?
The last thing I remember is the lake embracing me. The crack of the St. Anne’s hull, a jagged sound of purity. The deliciousness of nine hearts beating, and the first heart arresting in exquisite silence. The dreams of the dead usually infect me for hours afterward, but this time, something changed. This was not the dream of a lake sailor. I’m sure of it. And what’s more, I’m not in the water, where I ought to be after such a feeding.
And then there was the boy. He was there, and saw me, and then I saw nothing.
“You’re awake.”
He hovers in the doorway. He’s here. In my father’s house. He holds a steaming cup of something, which means he’s used my father’s kitchen. His pants hang loosely on his hips, and he’s wearing a hole-ridden T-shirt instead of the bulky jacket he usually has. His arms are lean and roped with muscle. He’s thin and tall, a knife on end. I lift my eyes to study his face.
Those eyes.
They were in my dream.
I immediately look down, feeling like an intruder in his memory. The dead, they give me their dreams as payment for their relief of life. But I have given nothing to this boy. What did I take that I should see such a vision?
My hands splay across the fabric of my nightgown. This wasn’t the one I was wearing when the storm found me. It’s different. Which means he must have changed my clothes. Interesting. I had been curious, watching him shed his clothes to bathe in the lake. Perhaps he felt the need to reciprocate. How very interesting.
It takes a while for me to find words. Mentally, I try out a few, like “who” and “go” before flicking them away. My tongue moves, finally.
“What…what day is it?” I whisper hoarsely.
He twitches, then cocks his head. These are not the words he’d expected to hear. What did he think I would say? Get out?
“It’s, uh…Friday.”
“No. What is the date?”
“Oh.” He shuffles his feet and searches the ceiling for an answer. I do, too. There’s no calendar up above us. I don’t know why he’s looking there. His lips move, counting silently.
“It’s October twenty-fifth, I think,” he finally says.
Six more days. November is coming, and I wasn’t even able to wait. I used to have more control than this. What will Father say? What if he had been here?
The boy should have been taken with the nine. He’s owed to you and to me, she says. He ought not to be here.
“You ought not to be here,” I say, obediently.
His eyes contract with hurt. “I know. I’ll go soon. I just wanted to make sure you woke up okay. I think…I think you had a seizure or something.”
“Seizure,” I repeat. How violent. And I should know. Violence simmers in my blood, but this is a different word. Another type of taking without asking.
“You know? A spell. You were so out of it. I thought you had a fever, too. You actually walked into the lake.”
“Yes.”
“So you remember?”
“No.”
His eyebrows furrow. “I don’t understand.”
No, you wouldn’t, would you? I want to say. The walls of the house sigh. The house likes him, the way it likes my father. It wants him to stay, but the air around me stifles me, making it hard to breathe. It slips like molasses down my throat, coating my airways.
The house always wants to protect me, whereas the storm and the winds…they. It. She. She is far more jealous. I can feel her need clawing at me to keep me close, like she does my sisters.
The nine were not enough, because I wasn’t able to take them all. She knows it, and I feel it, too.
Eleven months is a long time to wait, my dearest.
Beyond the door, I can see the window in the main room. Raindrops from the storm cling to the panes of glass. They rearrange themselves into a face that judges me.
Mother.
The burning will begin again soon. Though a tension in my body has been pacified since the sinking of the St. Anne, I still feel unsettled. I search for the feeling—it’s urgent, in a way that won’t be ignored. It gnaws at my center.
I should make him leave. After a storm like this one, I usually feel energized, grounded. But I don’t. The boy took me away too soon.
I stare at him, inhaling courage. I prepare the words in my head:
You must leave.
You should leave.
You ought not to be here.
I open my mouth, and he inhales, too, ready for my words. The unsettled feeling in my center worsens. The boy already seems dejected, as if knowing what is to come. As if he’s heard it a thousand times.
So finally, I speak.
“I am hungry.”